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Candy makers say they won’t stand in the way of an effort in Congress to end a decades-old statute that allows U.S. companies to import goods made with forced labor.

The National Confectioners Association (NCA) stormed Capitol Hill this week to correct what they called a mischaracterization of their stance after some lawmakers expressed concern that candy makers were calling to preserve the import exemption.

The 1932 trade rule allows some products that are made by forced or child labor to enter the United States when demand outstrips the domestic supply.

From Belgian chocolate eggs encrusted with salted caramel to foil-wrapped Swiss bunnies, Easter treats have never been so cheap. The supermarket price war that started with everyday staples, such as bread and milk, has spread to seasonal luxuries.

Ryan Berk makes his chocolate from scratch. That means flying to Central America four times a year, hiking over Maya ruins to remote jungle villages and meeting face-to-face with the farmers who supply his cocoa beans.

Roasted back home at Berk's shop, the beans have a habit of enveloping downtown Redlands with a warm smell like brownies fresh from the oven. It's only then that the chocolate maker with the Indiana Jones streak can mix and shape the ancient treat into bars, carefully wrapping each one by hand.

A radical plan by the Thai government to put prisoners to work on the country's under-staffed fishing boats has been scrapped, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday, following charges the scheme threatened inmates' rights.

Rights groups had also argued the idea would fail to address the fundamental causes of the labor shortage that fuels human trafficking in Thailand's fishing industry.

BANGKOK, Thailand — Trawling the ocean on a Thai fishing boat is one of Asia’s foulest jobs.

It can involve 20-hour work days on a reeking boat, bobbing on lawless seas, under captains who lord over crews like slave drivers. The job attracts so few takers that fishing syndicates infamously rely on forced labor: duping migrants onto ships and forcing them to toil for no pay.

It’s little wonder that Thailand’s fishing industry — a top supplier to the US — struggles to attract workers under such grim conditions.

Thailand's government has drawn criticism for its plan to use prisoner labor from more than 40 labor and human rights groups.

The government plan aims to curb human trafficking caused by a labor shortage in the fishing industry. Thailand's record in fighting human trafficking was downgraded to its lowest level in 2014 by the U.S. Department of State.

A good chunk of that deliciousness on our holiday dessert trays is sourced from lush farmlands of West Africa, where cocoa beans are tenderly grown and processed to meet the scrutiny of international quality controls. The end product is a painstakingly nurtured commodity valued like no other in the world. The same cannot be said of the children working the land.

Despite substantial efforts by their governments, child labor and poverty persist in the cocoa farms of Ghana and the Ivory Coast, says the International Labor Rights Forum in a 64-page paper released yesterday. Over the course of two years of research, ILRF says it found many farm families living “on real incomes of about 40 cents per dependent per day.” They borrow money to “purchase inputs for their crop or to pre-sell their cocoa in order to finance the harvest and transport their cocoa, thus forcing many into cyclical patterns of indebtedness,” says IRLF.

As the holiday chocolate buying season moves into high gear in the United States, a new report from the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) out today sheds light on the struggle of West African cocoa farmers to earn decent livelihoods — despite increasing demand for cocoa and higher prices.